


possibly, through all these stars

by pyrrhical (anoyo)



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Episode Tag, Episode: s02e22 Nevertheless She Persisted, Gen, Minor Kara Danvers/Mon-El, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-20 04:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14887800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anoyo/pseuds/pyrrhical
Summary: Spoilersfor the end of S2 and, honestly, everything past that, though general.Mon-El shifts his vision back to the moon, blinking and squinting as a rough breeze blows the sand around. As he looks, the sky clears a little. A little is enough, and Mon-El can see an arrangement of stars appear in the vastness of space. Those stars are the ones that burn so brightly that everyone in their section of the galaxy can watch them, on display, either dying or burning so bright and hard that no one can survive up close.





	possibly, through all these stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [agirlnamedtruth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/agirlnamedtruth/gifts).



> Dear Recip,
> 
> I hope you enjoy this! You didn't list any character preferences, so I tried to incorporate your tags as best I could.
> 
> Huge thanks go out to S and D, who made this fic better and less like my brain just exploded onto a Google Doc. Also, I don't usually do lower-case titles, but S was pretty brilliant.

The pod hisses open without any instruction. Though his shock, Mon-El spends a moment considering what an awful safety feature that is. The part of his mind that’s in control, measured and trying to rationalize, lets him know that he’s breathing, he doesn’t appear to be hurt, and that he needs to get out of the pod and figure out where he is. Mon-El has taken to attributing that logic to Kara, since he certainly hadn’t had it before her.

Mon-el slides out of the pod, and just breathes for a moment. Only a few hours ago, he was on Earth, saying goodbye to Kara. Saying goodbye to Kara because the Earth had become toxic to him, because his mother had tried to rule it, because the lead had been needed to defeat her. It really only had been hours -- not even a full day -- since his mother had died, his home had nearly killed him again, and he’d had to leave behind the girl who had made him better, whom he had loved. 

Hours.

Mon-El takes another deep breath before he straightens and looks around. He doesn’t have time to wallow until he knows where he is and that he’s safe. That’s what Kara would want.

He thinks that he’ll be using that a lot: what would Kara say? 

The area in which he’s landed is barren. It doesn’t seem like a desert; the climate isn’t right, and it’s not sandy. Instead, it’s simply dead. Mon-El doesn’t recognize it. It’s all right; he never expected to. Before coming to Earth, before Daxam became like this field, Mon-El had traveled the galaxy. He knows the stars.

Mon-El looks up. There is a single moon visible, half-obscured by the dusty late-afternoon sky. Mon-El thinks it must be a yellow sun, though, that’s setting behind the rocky hills on the horizon. He feels stronger, like his body is healing from the poison running through his veins, faster than it otherwise might.

A yellow sun he can deal with. He knows what it means for him, and what it means for the planet. A yellow sun is a young sun, in galactic terms. A yellow sun means a relatively young natural population, if a population exists. A yellow sun means that no one has yet begun harvesting it for fuel or power. 

Mon-El shifts his vision back to the moon, blinking and squinting as a rough breeze blows the sand around. As he looks, the sky clears a little. A little is enough, and Mon-El can see an arrangement of stars appear in the vastness of space. Those stars are the ones that burn so brightly that everyone in their section of the galaxy can watch them, on display, either dying or burning so bright and hard that no one can survive up close.

He recognizes the stars. They’ve shifted a bit, some closer, some missing, some new, but they remain largely the same. The education he only sometimes paid attention to tells him that this means the passage of time. The passage of time, in terms of hundreds of years, for the stars to be even this minutely different.

Mon-El is on Earth, but it’s not his Earth. It seems like he’s landed on a parallel Earth, just different enough to mean it won’t be what he’s expecting.

He pats his pockets for a moment, and feels objects in a few of them. Mon-El takes a moment to fasten Kara’s necklace at his nape, then drops it underneath his shirt. He pulls out his cell phone, still sitting in the inside pocket of his jacket. It’s undamaged somehow, but when he activates the screen there’s no signal.

It’s not that surprising; he’d had reception on Earth-1, but he’s never tried it anywhere else. Different Earths, different histories, different technologies -- it makes sense. 

Out of curiosity, he pulls up the screen for the phone’s WiFi and searches for a signal that way. Kara had explained how it worked, but Winn had explained about the different wavelengths the reception and the WiFi ran on. He’d given Winn a teasing remark about being a nerd, but it had been interesting, and he’d filed it away to look up later.

No WiFi networks pop up, but before Mon-El has time to be properly disappointed, a large, red box appears in the middle of the phone’s screen. It flashes between red and green a few times before a face appears.

The face is human normal, but that doesn’t mean much. Mon-El’s face is human normal, and he isn’t human at all.

“Hello,” the face -- the person says, echoing strangely from the phone’s speakers. Maybe it had been damaged after all. “Your signal has been received by the Planetary Emergency Broadcast Network.” The person, who sounds and appears female, though Mon-El knows better than to assume, seems a strange combination of earnest and bored. “What is your emergency?”

Mon-El stares for a moment. He makes a conscious decision to be optimistic, though half of him is suggesting flight over fight. Cautiously, he takes a deep breath, then says, “I’m lost.” It’s an understatement, but if this Earth isn’t aware of the multiverse, it’s the least incriminating thing he can think of.

The person nods, as though this is the usual response, or, at least, not unusual. “Can you tell me where you are?” they ask.

“Uh,” Mon-El says, looking around, “no. I’m lost.” He winces at how that might have sounded, but the person on the phone doesn’t look offended.

“All right,” they say. “Are you giving me verbal permission to locate your signal?”

“Yes,” Mon-El says, confused. Why wouldn’t they just do it? He remembers something about privacy laws from an evening spent listening to Alex and Winn debate, but it’s not a strong enough memory to actually be helpful.

A few moments later, his phone chimes and a GPS location appears on the screen. It looks like the same GPS numerology as the DEO used, which was vastly different from that of Daxam, or even Krypton. The person says, “It appears as though you are in the Nevada Waste.”

Nevada. That was near California, his mind supplied. “Okay,” he agreed.

“Are you able to navigate yourself to your destination with this information?” the person asks.

Mon-El grimaces. They seem helpful enough, so he says, “No.” He pauses, clears his throat. “I don’t have a destination. I’m not sure how I got here.”

The person raises their eyebrows, then asks, “Do you know which Earth you are meant to be on?”

“Yes,” Mon-El says, the answer startled out of him. “Earth-38.” The question means he was right, and he is certainly on Earth. Which Earth remains to be seen.

The person gives him a strange look, then says, “Hold on a moment,” and the box on the screen turns blue, the word “HOLD” slowly flashing in the center.

Mon-El looks around again. If this is Nevada, he isn’t that far from National City. At least, on Earth-38 he wouldn’t be. 

The box flickers green again, and when the video link reconnects, it’s panned out a little, so that both the person he had been speaking to earlier and another person, this one appearing older and male, are visible. “I am Captain James Hollows,” the new person says, and Mon-El uses the name to softly conclude that the Captain is male. “Officer Pern--” he gestures to the person Mon-El had been talking to-- “says that you are lost, and looking for Earth-38.”

Mon-El nods. “That’s correct,” he says.

The Captain’s eyebrows furrow. “May I see your identification card, please?”

He’d found his wallet in a pocket during his initial pat down, so he pulls it out and drops it on the surface of the pod so he can dig through it one-handed. He has two IDs: one for the State of California, and one for the DEO. His California ID reads “Michael Matthews,” and his DEO ID reads “Mon-El.” He picks up the California ID, moves the phone a little further away, and holds the ID up next to his face.

The Captain obviously zooms in on whatever screen he’s using, then zooms back out quickly. “Mr. Matthews,” he says, “someone will arrive at your location shortly.”

That gives Mon-El pause. “Thanks,” he says, “but why? Where am I?” If they’re going to arrest him for being from Earth-38, at least they’re being nice about it.

The Captain and Officer Pern share a look that seems almost guilty. Finally, the Captain says, “You’re on Earth-38, but I believe we know the cause of your confusion.” He clears his throat. “Your ID places your birth in the 20th Century. It is now the 31st Century.”

Mon-El stares for a moment, the words echoing a bit, both from the tinny sound of the speakers and the rush of blood in his ears. “A thousand years,” he says, more to himself than to the people on the other end of the line.

“I believe so, sir,” Officer Pern says. “Two officers should arrive at your location in about ninety seconds,” she continues. “They will take you to our central location and Captain Hollows and I will meet with you.”

“A thousand years,” Mon-El repeats, before he clears his throat and forces himself back to the present. Back to the future? The cynical part of him, the part wanting to double over and laugh at all of this, is thinking that Winn would _love_ this. “Where is your central location?” he asks.

Officer Pern looks to the side, and Mon-El guesses that she’s looking at what the name for the place was when Mon-El had last been on Earth-38. That’s what he would be doing. Maybe showing them the DEO badge will actually be useful. “Oh,” she says, “we’re in National City.” She looks to the side again quickly, then back. “According to your ID, your permanent address is here in National City. Perhaps that will help.”

Her voice is kind, and Mon-El can tell that she’s trying to use it to be calming. He hears a siren in the distance, slowly coming closer. “Yes,” Mon-El answers. “It is.” He pauses. “Was.”

This isn’t the first time he’s landed in the future, he reminds himself. He can handle it. What would Kara say? Make the best of it, and try to get home. He can do that.

It only occurs to him as he’d stepping into the vehicle, the words “Planetary Emergency Network” painted on the side, that he’s been breathing just fine, and even healing. He’s traveled far enough that the lead, a heavy metal, has dissipated from the atmosphere.


End file.
